Huge magnifies collaboration and productivity with Dropbox for Business.

Huge, Inc. is a end-to-end digital advertising agency that provides strategy, design, and development services for clients including HBO, PepsiCo, IKEA, and Toyota. With offices in the U.S., Europe, and South America, the company's operations are dependent on the ability to effectively exchange ideas and information with Huge team members around the world.

Seeking simple, yet powerful sharing in the cloud

Because the team is distributed around the globe, collaboration hasn't always been a simple task for Huge. The company needed a way to quickly and easily share large files among staff-and across devices-no matter where they were located. "Given how fast we need to turn things around, it's important that we are able to work quickly," explains Huge Director of IT, Paul Doyle. "Employees are dispersed geographically, and the data being shared is big, so it's become increasingly difficult to do business in a traditional way." When the company realized its existing file sharing system was falling flat, Doyle began exploring options that would address the growing need for better collaboration capabilities. His main priority was to keep existing workflows intact, but he was also concerned with simple file sharing, access across devices, file size flexibility, and cost. For several months, Huge tried modeling and testing an open-source solution, but ultimately decided that management and cost requirements-including the need for international staff-were just too much. The company began evaluating other solutions but found price and file size restrictions to be problematic.

A solution that supports established workflows

When Doyle discovered Dropbox for Business, he says he found "a system that fit with existing workflows, instead of one that required Huge to change its workflows to fit the system." In addition to offering competitive pricing, Dropbox for Business gave Huge the space and freedom it needed to share large files and accommodate a growing number of employees and clients, in a variety of locations. Features like LAN-syncing meant Huge could immediately sync files with international offices in London and Rio de Janeiro. Users finally had the capacity to share high-definition graphics and videos-no matter the size- and parse out raw file formats to expedite work. On the admin side, files could be locked and controlled, to keep work correctly distributed, and deleted files could be restored. Making the move to Dropbox for Business as the company-wide sharing and storage system was also easy. Huge Manager of Technical Support Systems Sam Gorney says, "The transition was quite smooth. About seven out of ten people already had Dropbox accounts, and they were excited to be able to gain so much storage. It was very, very simple for everyone to move their personal Dropbox accounts to our Business account."

Improving efficiency — and client satisfaction

Dropbox for Business has impacted almost every department within Huge, providing a new, streamlined way for employees to tackle important, everyday tasks. "We have many people who work on two machines," says Doyle. "By working with data in Dropbox, they can synchronize their laptops and desktops. This alleviates the need for IT to provide a solution to make sure multiple devices are in sync. Dropbox does it for us." Now, departments across the organization have an easier time staying on the same page. For instance, the user design group has found Dropbox for Business particularly helpful when collaborating on wire frame development for websites. Sharing software on Dropbox also made updates easier for the IT group, "When I need to get software out to remote sites, Dropbox is honestly the best solution," says Gorney. "I had to distribute a new version of the MAC operating system, and Dropbox made it very easy to share that file with the rest of the team." Collaboration with international offices has also become smoother. "Dropbox gives us the flexibility to share with our Brazil office, without having to implement any infrastructure. It used to be difficult to get things in place, but Dropbox lets us easily get files over to the South American team," says Gorney. Project managers are the heaviest users within Huge, relying on Dropbox to push out budgets, project files, statements of work, and more. One of the greatest advantages project managers have realized is the ability to share deliverables with their clients easily. As Doyle explains, "Dropbox allows us to share data, in a secure fashion, just by sending a link-instead of having to set up specific directories when we want to send one file. It speeds up the process of collaboration between our team and external third parties, and that definitely has made a difference." Huge also benefits from the new storage system during external meetings with clients. "Many times we get a call from someone on the team asking for a file to be placed in Dropbox so they can download it onto the client's system. Dropbox gives them the flexibility to show work they didn't bring which previously would have required emailing or trying to FTP it," says Doyle. Now, with Dropbox for Business, Huge can immediately share any file at any time.